AMT Lab @ CMU

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CAMT in style at the NTEN Nonprofit Technology Conference

CAMT was in full attendence at NTEN's Nonprofit Technology Conference this year in Washington, DC, from April 4-6. Brad flew out early to attend the Day of Service on Wednesday. He helped an organization learn how to record and post a podcast.

Emily and I flew into DC together late Wednesday night and strategized our session attendence. The conference came at an integral time when Emily and I are looking for jobs, so we focused our networking opportunities to certain session tracks. She mostly attended Web 2.0 and communication sessions, while I focused on consulting and project management ones.

Some of the highlights of the sessions I attended:

Bill Strathmann's session, "The ROI Question: Demonstrating the value of technology to your organization," was particularly informative. He presented some nice models and diagrams of how to demonstrate your IT value to your funders or CEO in a clear and concise way. I'll definitely be looking to the complimentary thumbdrive that NTEN gave away to access that Power Point presentation.

The rule of managing expectations was re-enforced in a casual and anecdotal setting at the "Contracting with Consultants: How to engineer a better working relationship." Eric Leland and session attendees shared their expertise and stories about the consulting relationship.

CAMT had a prime spot in the grand hallway to the conference's main ballroom at the Innovation Plaza. Brad and I demonstrated CAMT's new CueRate tool, a visual art panel review management system, to conference passerbys. I also had the chance to talk to professionals who were interested in presenting at Technology in the Arts 2007.

The conference finale came when Grassroots.org awarded CAMT a one foot tall glittery tree statuette and $1000 for CueRate, one of the top 6 innovative tools recognized for the Techie Award of the Year. Cary pleased the audience and placated the time-laden MC with a quick victory pose.

Photos and the award video will be up soon on Flickr and YouTube, respectively.�